Documents Reveal How Paulson Forced Banks To Take TARP Cash

Remember the infamous meeting when then Treasury Secretary Hank
Paulson had the heads of 9 major banks come down to Washington?
It was then that he made them the offer they couldn't refuse.
Take TARP cash, or else!

Now
Judicial Watch -- the conservative watchdog organization
which was famous for giving the Clinton administration fits --
has uncovered secret documents from that meeting via the Freedom
of Information Act. A few of them are really quite stunning.

The first 1-pager is Paulson's talking points for the bank. It
basically confirms that he put a gun to all their heads. It says
they must agree to take their cash, and that if they protested,
then each bank's regulator would force them to take it anyway.

The next document is perhaps even more mindblowing. It's the
one-page agreement whereby each CEO agreed to let the government
make its preferred stock injeciton. As you can see, both the
amounts of the injection and the name of the bank are just
handwritten scrawl.